


An Eye for an Eye

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: "dear diary my mommy issues now have a body count", Blood, Canon-Typical Gore, Canonical Character Death, Chemotherapy, Gen, Gerry lives AU, I mean it's the slaughter you gotta, Kidnapping, Open Ending, Power Swap AU, Role Swap AU, Taxidermy, canon-typical songfic, does getting yeeted into the lonely count as a character death?, downer ending, mlm/wlw solidarity in the background, other kinds of character death, questionable parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-07-31 14:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20116885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blindWhen the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute goes missing, her son steps in to fill her shoes. Gerard Keay has three semi-competent assistants, one disaster of an archive, and six months of chemo left to go. Perfect time to go meet some monsters, right?(written for the Rusty Quill Big Bang 2019)





	1. the sentiment of a sort of invisible omnipresence

The halls of the Magnus Institute were very clean and very cold. Gerry took tremendous delight in the black scuff marks his boots left on the tile, a little payback for the countless hours of _no running _and _no touching _and _who let this kid in here _that had characterized what passed for his childhood. Hardly anything had really changed, except for the computers on some of the desks. The Archives probably hadn't changed at all.

"Your mother thought very highly of you," Elias was saying, but he was eyeing the scuff marks. Maybe he was having second thoughts about this conversation. Good. "I think she always regretted that you didn't want to carry on the family business, so to speak."

"Mary would've sold me to Satan for a packet of crisps if she was in the mood," Gerry reminded him, "and the only reason she wanted me in the _family business _was so she could keep ordering me about."

Elias sighed. He'd only come into his position when Gerry was already in his teens and allowed out unsupervised, so perhaps he hadn't quite realized he was getting himself into. "Be that as it may, her disappearance has left us in a bit of a bind. To be blunt, she has been … difficult to work with, these past few years."

"Past few decades," Gerry mumbled.

"Moreso than usual, I mean." Elias paused, probably to allow Gerry time to imagine just what _that _had looked like. "She refused to employ any assistants, and all but barred anyone but myself and one or two of the cleaners from entering the Archives. She barely glanced at any of the research sent down unless it suited her … particular interests … and I believe, towards the end, that she was stealing or destroying records. Now that she's gone, the Archives are both disaster and minefield, and there is no one currently within the Institute who possesses both the breadth of occult knowledge and the familiarity with Mary's … idiosyncrasies, let's say, to tackle the mess."

Gerry stopped in his tracks, which forced Elias to stop awkwardly mid-stride. "Cut the guilt trip, Bouchard. If you really cared about the state of your archives, you'd have stepped in years ago, and at any rate, that job takes library sciences, not parapsychology. Why are you really twisting my arm about this?"

Elias gave him a measuring look. "You are, by reputation, among the most brilliant esoteric scholars in Europe. Any institution like ours would be thrilled to have you, yet you've remained stubbornly freelance."

"Dress codes," Gerry said, keeping his face perfectly straight. "Not a fan."

"You also," Elias said, lowering his voice, "are in the midst of a course of intense chemotherapy. Brain cancer, yes? You've already run through most of your savings, and it will be some time before you're well enough to engage in the sort of hijinks that you built your career on. You need a steady income while you recover, Gerard, and I can offer you extremely generous terms. Think of it as a sort of homecoming."

He was caught, briefly, between a surge of acidic rage at the invasion of his privacy, and the sudden, cold reminder that he was in an enclosed space with a dangerous predator. He tried not to let that chill show in his face as he met Elias's eyes: they were an oddly mixed blue-gray color that reminded him of an oil slick. "All right, Creepy McBastard, what are your 'generous terms'?"

Elias didn’t react to the insult, unfortunately. If anything, he looked smug. "A salary commensurate with your level of experience, naturally, and a generous expense account. The usual privileges of Institute affiliation, such as access to the library and, provided you sign the appropriate waivers, Artefact Storage. I'll assign you a staff with the relevant qualifications to manage the more mundane aspects of the project, so you're free to focus your attention where it's needed most, and you'll have discretion in how you approach it – within reason, of course."

A nice, gilded cage, in other words. "Two years," Gerry retorted. "I'll sign on for two years, do what I can to mop up after Mary, and then I'm out."

He'd picked a number mostly at random, not really expecting Elias to agree with him; but he simply nodded. "A perfectly reasonable request, I think. Though of course, I would hope that you'll be interested in continuing our association further."

That was too easy. "You can't stop me taking outside gigs now and again, either."

"As long as you don't drag the Institute's reputation into it, I don't see why that would be a problem," Elias said genially.

"No dress code," he tried, gamely.

That finally got Elias's eyes to narrow dangerously.

"Worth a shot," Gerry conceded. "But I expect a bonus to my first check if you want me in suits."

"I'll take it out of the discretionary budget," Elias said solemnly. He offered Gerry his hand, and Gerry reluctantly shook: Elias's palm was almost feverishly warm, but there was none of the macho grip-testing he'd half-expected. "Welcome aboard, Gerard. I expect we'll work very well together."

He offered to pay for Gerry's cab, and while Gerry's pride told him to refuse, the alternative was navigating the Tube at rush hour and...no. He watched the Institute recede from the back window, the graceful columned facade that hid far more from the world than offices and reading rooms. If nothing else, he supposed he should be relieved to have something reliable to fall back on. Plus, he knew Mary would out of his hair for the foreseeable future. At least, for as long as he still had hair. _Whatever you're up to, _he thought in her general direction, _I hope it's bloody worth it. And I hope it takes a nice long time. _

[](https://clownrenown.tumblr.com/post/186920578390/my-contribution-to-the-pilesofnonsense-rq-big)   
Artwork by [clownrenown.](https://clownrenown.tumblr.com/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Jeremy Bentham's _Panopticon, or The Inspection House._


	2. he feels like a boy should feel, isn't that the point

The assistants Elias saddled him with were not exactly what Gerry had expected from the rarefied atmosphere of the Magnus Institute. Two of them were called Michael, one very short and one very tall, and he didn’t think he could fire them just for being confusing. The short one, at least, appeared to have some actual skills, but the tall one was cheerful, cherubic, and thick as a brick. The third one, Jane Prentiss, had introduced herself as a "practicing witch" and lined up several small pyramids made of black stone around the edges of her desk, saying something about "electromagnetic pollution" that made Gerry's head hurt.

He'd sent Elias an email consisting entirely of the word _seriously? _in various different fonts. He had gotten no reply. Asshole.

Still. The thing Elias had been right about was that Gerry felt like shit more often than not. Some days it was all he could do to drag himself into his rathole of a basement office — the same rathole Mary had operated out of for all those years, the one he'd basically been raised in, and didn't that just add insult to injury? But, as Elias had said, he didn't have much of a choice. He compensated by redecorating, and kept making a mental note to use his wide budgetary discretion to buy a napping couch. 

What all this meant, in the near term, was that he often found it regrettably necessary to delegate.

"Say it again," he told the Michaels, pushing a tape recorder across the table. "Only slower and with less crosstalk."

Short Michael removed the ice pack from his face long enough to give the tape recorder an underwhelmed look. "Sorry, what decade is this?"

"Humor me."

Short Michael rolled the eye that wasn’t in the process of swelling shut. Tall Michael leaned over the tape player and said, hesitantly. "Do we – do we just start, or … ?"

"From the beginning is usually best," Gerry said dryly. 

Short Michael sighed explosively. "Fine. 24th October, 2015, statement of Michael Crew and Michael Shelley, regarding the staff of a taxidermist's shop in Barnet. They are clearly robots and we should call the police. End statement."

"Mike," Tall Michael whined. 

Gerry growled. At least the hoarseness from throwing up his breakfast made for a very impressive growl. "What. Happened."

Tall Michael broke first. "So you asked us – should we start with the statement from Edinburgh?" Gerry glared. "Right, okay, sorry! You asked us to do some background research on a statement about, um, a stranger, up in Edinburgh. People disappearing. And something about fish?"

"The fish was a metaphor," Short Michael said wearily. "You had us looking into missing persons from Edinburgh, and I thought I'd found one was no longer missing. Fellow named Daniel Rawlings, who apparently now runs a taxidermist's shop called The Trophy Room in Woodside Park. The information on the business permit matched the disappearing Scotsman, at least, so you asked me to go verify if it was the same person or not, and maybe get an interview about how exactly he'd ended up reported missing in Edinburgh nine years ago."

"Us," Tall Michael put in a little petulantly. "He sent both of us."

(Gerry honestly wasn't sure which of the two of them he'd meant to send. Probably the smarter one.)

Short ignored the interruption. "We got there about half two, right, place looks normal enough from the outside, if by 'normal' you mean 'creepy as hell.' Glass eyes every direction you look, smells like someone ate an entire florist's shop and threw it up under the floorboards. The only employee in sight was a fellow with his feet up on the front desk, reading some sort of kayaking magazine. I asked him if he was Daniel Rawlings and--"

"No," Tall said, "no, you just asked for 'Daniel'. And he said no. So you asked if Daniel was here, and he said yes. I don't think he looked up from the magazine the entire time. I didn't – we would've noticed if he looked up."

"So I asked him if he could _get_ Daniel," Short continued. "And without even standing up he just shouted 'Danny!' at the top of his voice. And out of the back someone shouted back, 'What!' And the man at the desk said 'People!' And the man in the back just shouted 'Okay!' And then Kayak Man just turned a page of his magazine and said, in a normal voice, 'He'll be up in a bit.'"

"I think I've seen that skit," Gerry muttered. 

"It wasn't Daniel Rawlings, though," Tall said. "The one who came out of the back. It turned out he was Daniel _Stoker_, and he said he and his brother Tim – that was the one with the magazine – they'd bought stakes in the Trophy Room about two years ago. Said Daniel Rawlings was a friend from uni, but he'd had to go back to Edinburgh for some sort of family emergency and couldn't say when he'd be back. I told him, you know, my condolences and everything."

"And also that he’s full of shit," Short continued, "because Rawlings' name was the only one on the paperwork for that place. I mean, I didn't say it in so many words, I'm not _stupid, _but I thought it was suspicious as hell. So I asked Stoker if he had Rawling's contact information, and he said, sure, we've got it all in the office, come on back. And I made the mistake of leaving _this _one out front with the other brother."

Short Michael hooked a thumb in Tall Michael's direction. Tall Michael managed to shrivel up in his seat, somehow. "I said I was sorry," he muttered. 

"You first," Gerry said, pointing at Short Michael.

He took a deep breath. "So. I went into the back office with Danny Stoker, and he started rooting around in the desk – the place was a sty, except for one wall that was covered in old pelts of some sort, and I could smell something really foul coming out of the adjoining workshop. I was mostly thinking that I'd need to shower for a week after we got out of there, and I wasn't really listening to what Stoker was nattering on about. At least until I realized that no human being could possibly be taking _that _long to find a simple piece of paper with a phone number or an e-mail. Which is around the moment he suddenly rugby-tackled me _into _his nasty workshop."

Gerry pointed to Tall Michael. Tall Michael stared at him for a moment, until specifically prompted. "And you were...?"

"Oh! I was, um, looking at the taxidermy?" He jiggled his shoulders in a gesture that vaguely approximated a shrug. "I mean, there wasn't much else _to _do in there. Tim, the one at the desk, just kept his nose in his magazine. I, erm, I tried to ask about the … I think it was a lion, in the window?"

"Tiger," Short corrected.

"Right. But he just said it came with the shop." Tall fidgeted with the sleeves of his jumper for a bit. "Then I asked, you know – I was just trying to be polite – I asked how he found the taxidermy business. And he said, 'I hate it. This is hell. You should run, right now, before you get peeled and stuffed, too.' But his voice stayed so flat and calm, and he still didn't look up. So I wasn't … I thought maybe he was being sarcastic? But then we heard Mike shout, and … and that was the first time Tim looked up. Do you know how doll eyes are?"

Gerry frowned at the non-sequitur. "The glass kind, or plastic?"

Tall Michael said, "Yes, exactly," like that made sense. "That's just how Tim Stoker's eyes were. Like doll's eyes. Just … as close of a copy of a thing as you can have without being the thing. I hadn't noticed until then because he was looking at his magazine, but …"

He trailed off. Gerry gave him a moment before prompting again, "And then...?"

"Oh, erm." Tall Michael looked at his hands again. "Then he jumped over the table and punched me in the stomach."

"Meanwhile," Short Michael said irritably, "I was trying to keep the other one from strangling me. I've done judo since I was a kid, okay, I know how to get out of a hold. But Danny Stoker must've weighed two hundred fifty pounds, even though he didn't look it at all, and I swear hitting him was like hitting a heavy bag at the gym. Just...weirdly solid." His bruised and bleeding knuckles certainly attested to that. "And then his brother jumped in and I really thought I was done for. Until my knight in shining armor here turned up and started pulling hair." 

Tall Michael was apparently impervious to sarcasm. "Well, they were both so much bigger than you and--"

"Not that much bigger."

"Everyone's bigger than you."

Short took the ice pack off his eye again to glare at Tall properly. "Are you calling me short?"

"...you are, though?"

"I am a _normal sized person--"_

"Can we focus," Gerry said, "on the alleged robots?"

They both sighed, and looked rather uncomfortable. Tall Michael continued first. "I didn't – I don't really, you know, I don't think I've ever thrown a punch before, but there were two of them and one of Mike and I was – so I started grabbing at them, trying to pull them off him. He's right, though, they were so heavy. Like bags of sand. And I just, everyone kept moving so much, so I couldn't really tell who or what I was grabbing at, I just grabbed something and pulled and--" He swallowed.

Short Michael took over. "It was Danny Stoker's hair. He was sitting on my chest at the time, and when Michael pulled his hair, it … you know the sound of a seam bursting? That sort of _zzrrr? _Yeah. He ripped the stitches, and Stoker's whole scalp peeled off like a section of orange. There was no blood – just something white. Not bone, bone's not glossy like that. I'm pretty sure it was plastic."

"I didn't mean to," Tall Michael added quietly. "I – I said I was sorry."

"To Stoker?" Gerry asked, just for clarification. Tall nodded. 

Short Michael gave Gerry a you-see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with look and put the ice pack back over his face. "I guess it startled them enough to stop them, for a moment, because I was able to get out from under Danny and run for it. I don't think we stopped until we hit West Finchley? And then we headed straight back here."

Gerry stared at them, bruised and rattled but, improbably, alive and still wearing their own skins. What was the saying about fools, children and drunks? "Statement ends," he announced, and switched off the tape recorder. "I think you should go to the police."

Short Michael actually looked surprised by this. "So … you agree they were robots?"

"They were something, all right," Gerry said. "Tell the police you've got to report a crime that's covered by Section 31. Someone will know what that means. I, meanwhile, will try to see if a Daniel or Timothy Stoker ever spent time in Edinburgh, or if not, where they got snatched from." And warn Elias that the Stranger was getting handsy with the staff. He seemed like the sort of territorial bastard who might mind that, even if his god did get a snack out of the deal. 

The Michaels were still staring at him. 

"Was I unclear about something?" Gerry asked. 

"I … didn't expect you to believe us," Short Michael admitted. 

Gerry blinked. "You do know where you _work, _right? Now, run along, the both of you." At least he didn't have to tell them a third time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Coin Operated Boy" by the Dresden Dolls.


	3. I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen

Elias, as it turned out, was not as territorial as Gerry might’ve liked. "Unfortunate," was how he characterized the attempted murder of two employees, "but I have no interest in escalating matters."

"I think we're past the point of _escalation_," Gerry argued.

Elias's expression didn't so much as flicker; his eyes looked greenish-grey in this light, like bread mold. "We record and observe, Gerard, we don't interfere. And to be perfectly blunt, it sounds as if you started it."

The Michaels made their report to the Met, but after a few weeks the Trophy Room still appeared to be open for business and no worse for wear. Maybe the Stoker brothers had just put on a better show for the police, or maybe the officers had been stuffed and sent back as cover.

Either way, help wasn’t coming from above. So Gerry, who should've been used to this sort of thing, fell back on unofficial channels.

A disused industrial park on the East End wasn’t his idea of a fun Saturday night, but then again, the Hunt wasn’t really known for its civilized behavior. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the side of one of the buildings, trying to look casual and only coincidentally putting his back to a wall. (His oncologist had Opinions about his continuing to smoke, but if Gerry had to pump himself full of poisons, he wanted some control over which ones and when.)

The scheduled time for the meeting came, and it went just as swiftly. He’d sort of expected that. This kind of friend-of-a-friend bullshit was risky, in their world, especially considering the kinds of enemies hunters tended to make. If they wanted to size him up from a distance before making contact, well, that was just common sense. 

Besides, by now he was plenty used to the feeling of being watched.

As the hour slipped later, though, Gerry started to get annoyed. Or perhaps he should’ve been worried. He’d been told this particular hunter was reliable, sure, but actions spoke louder than words, and the neuropathic pain in his hands and feet spoke loudest. If they didn’t show soon—

His train of thought was cut off by a long, low growl. He wasn’t even sure if the growling had just started, or if he’d only just noticed it detach from the distant sound of traffic and wind. Gerry scanned the vacant car park in front of him, heart racing, but there was nowhere for the hunter to be hiding, and nowhere for him to retreat to. Running was out of the question, not in his present state of health. As he tried to get a hold on himself, the growl came again — was it closer now? — perfectly tuned to reach into the lizard parts of his brain and remind him that he could be _prey. _

“Hey.”

He spun around — in the moment he’d taken to peer into the darkness to one side, a woman had appeared on the other. She was short, solidly built, wearing sturdy boots and a motorcycle jacket. A proper one, too, the kind meant to protect you when you hit concrete at seventy miles an hour, which meant it could probably protect her from a fair number of other things as well. Her black nylon hijab fastened with velcro over each ear, not that Gerry thought he’d stand a chance of getting a grip on it in the first place. 

“Dropped your cigarette,” she added, calm as anything. 

Gerry reached for his equilibrium, couldn’t find it, and fell back on sass instead. “Aren’t you a little short for a hunter?” he asked.

She inclined her head at him slightly. “Aren’t you a little goth for an Archivist?”

Well, that showed she’d done her homework, at least. “The Archivist was my mother,” he told her shortly. “I’m just a temp. And this isn’t technically Archives business, anyway.”

That growl again, and it was most _definitely _louder than before. Gerry froze for a moment before he could get a grip on himself, but the hunter in front of him smiled. “That’s just Daisy,” she said serenely. 

“...okay.” Gerry fought the urge to look around again, and instead put his hands out in front of him. “I’ve got the details in my inside pocket. I’m going to get them out, if that’s okay with _Daisy.” _The woman nodded at him to proceed. “A couple of my assistants were attacked in Barnet last month, and the head of the Institute isn’t much interested in retaliation. I, however, believe a healthy show of force is a damned good way to keep certain elements out of our business for the foreseeable future. Tit for tat, so to speak.”

“Those elements being monsters, I assume?” She took the envelope he offered her and checked inside it. “Names and addresses?”

“As much as I could scrape up,” Gerry promised, though it wasn’t much. Timothy Stoker had reported his brother Daniel missing in London in August of 2013, but since he started ranting about clowns halfways through his statement, the Met hadn’t seriously followed up on it. Tim was then reported missing less than a week later when he failed to show up to his job at HarperCollins. Their photos didn’t really match the men from the Trophy Room, according to Mike, but Gerry mostly expected that; after all, skin stretched.

The hunter flipped through all that information without bothering to read most of it. “And payment?”

“Half up front, details in the envelope,” he told her. “I’ll send the other half when the job’s done.” And when he could fudge the books so Elias didn’t realize he was using the Archives' budget to buy Bitcoin for assassins.

She nodded. “We’ll get it done. Though Daisy doesn’t much like dealing with skin bags.”

Probably because they weren’t human enough to shit themselves when she growled, Gerry assumed. “She has my condolences,” he said loudly, assuming (hoping) that she wasn’t already close enough to hear. “Anything else you need?”

“We’re good here.” She tucked the envelope into the front of her jacket and nodded to him. “See you around, Archivist.”

Gerry bit down the urge to correct her. “Hopefully soon, Hunter.” 

Within a week, the Trophy Room burned down; the police said it was probably arson, but they didn’t seem any more eager to investigate it than they’d been to investigate the initial assault. Gerry spared a moment to hope that whatever was left of the Stokers was at rest, and then set about trying to figure out the Bitcoin thing again. If Elias noticed any of it, he gave no sign. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon.


	4. I must have died alone a long, long time ago

Gerry had been warned that each round of chemotherapy was going to be worse than the one before it, but understanding that intellectually didn't help him bear it physically. Elias had informed him, oh so generously, that he could take as much time off as he needed after each treatment, but … well, Mary had always said his stubborn streak was going to get him killed one day. 

(It was strange to think that _her _stubborn streak had probably got her killed already. The thought took him by surprise, came at him sideways when he was on the Tube or just before falling asleep: she had taken off unannounced before, gone missing for weeks or months at a time, even when it meant leaving a school-aged child to fend for himself. But now she had vanished even from the sight of the Eye, and while he knew better than to underestimate her, he wasn't sure at what point that sort of caution bled into denial.)

(He was thirty-two years old, for Christ's sake, he shouldn't still be crying for his mother. Especially not _his _mother_. _And yet.)

All this meant he staggered into the archive after his final session with a bad case of chemo brain, too foggy to notice – well, much of anything, really. Just that his office door stood open, and there was no immediate sign of his assistants. Damn them all. If they'd wandered off and left the doors unlocked, he'd have to kill them, and that probably meant a lot of paperwork. 

He'd been hoping to curl up in his office to die once he got there, but at the doorway he discovered he had a visitor. Slightly built, the man wore the kind of very nice suit that you had to know things about suits to recognize as nice, and had a leather attache case at his feet. Though his curly hair was streaked with gray, his face wasn't lined – probably he was no older than Gerry himself, if that. 

He glanced up from the cigarette he'd been toying with. "Sorry," he said, not sounding the least bit sorry. "I saw the ashtray and just assumed. Do you mind?"

"Yes." Gerry made a big production of hanging up his own coat and scarf, and then flopped into his chair with all the grace and ceremony of a concussed ostrich. "What can I help you with, Mister...?"

"Sims. Jonathan Sims." He did not offer a hand, and had made no effort to put out his cigarette. "I'm here on behalf of the Lukas family regarding one of your department's recent investigations."

Well, at least he wasn't beating around the bush, was he? Gerry considered playing dumb and decided riling up Sims wasn't worth the trouble in the long run. "Naomi Hearne, yeah. I've been trying to confirm the details of her statement."

"I think you've been trying to do quite a bit more than that, Mr. Keay." Sims said with a hint of reproach, peering over the tops of his half-rim glasses. "Medical records are confidential for a reason."

"She signed an SAR form," Gerry said. 

"I wasn't referring to hers."

That wasn't a question, so Gerry didn't answer it. He wasn't giving Sims enough rope to hang him with. 

After a brief, but pointed, stare-down, Sims rolled his eyes with an aggrieved sigh. "Fine. I'll be blunt. The Lukases are one of this Institute's major donors, and if you continue to badger them, it will not go well for you. Miss Hearne is currently being dealt with—” Gerry’s heart jolted at this— “and you clearly have no shortage of other work that merits your attention."

"What do you mean, dealt with?" Gerry demanded.

One corner of Sims' mouth quirked up. "Ah. A poor choice of words on my part. Miss Hearne will shortly be paid quite a large sum of money, which may do little to mend a broken heart, but has historically proven quite effective at stopping a running mouth."

Well, that was slightly less alarming. "So it's a payoff for her, but threats for me, is it?" Gerry grumbled. "I'm feeling a bit like a cheap date, Mr. Sims."

"My patron has other ways of guaranteeing your cooperation, I think," Sims said mildly. 

"The hell is that supposed to—"

Gerry paused, as the brain cells that the tumor hadn’t eaten finally started firing again. Sims merely raised one eyebrow and took a drag off his cigarette. 

He lurched to his feet and out the door. There was no sign of his assistants, not in their shared office and not in the Archives generally: not Mike's corrosively strong morning coffee, not Michael's insipid pop music, not Jane's overabundance of patchouli. Had Rosie been at the front desk, when he'd dragged himself through the front entrance? Had anyone been waiting at the lifts when he passed them? 

How long had he been alone?

He groped for any scrap of bravado he could summon, and turned back to face the Lukas's … what, agent? Errand boy? Herald? But there was no sign of Jonathan Sims in his office, either, except for the smoldering stub of his cigarette and a bit of smoke hanging in the air like an after-image.

"All right, Ger—"

Gerry spun on his heel and brought up his fists. He _may_ have shouted, a bit. Michael dropped the box of files he was holding, which promptly split along two edges, dumping a rainbow of folders and loose papers onto the floor. Mike and Jane both poked their heads out of their office, eyes wide. 

"Sorry," Gerry said after a beat of strained silence. "You, er, startled me."

"Sorry," Michael said in a small voice, and folded himself down to the floor to begin tidying up the papers. 

Jane cleared her throat. "Bit tense this morning, are we?"

What the hell, they already thought he was a lunatic. "Has anyone else been in the Archives this morning?" he asked. "A man? Short, sort of fake posh, grating as hell?"

"If you're referring to me, I think I'm offended," Mike said dryly. Gerry waved him off.

The visitor's chair in his office was cold to the touch. The cigarette butt in his ashtray was a Silk Cut, though, not one of his own roll-ups. And, sitting in front of his own chair, perfectly square to the edge of the desk, was a business card. The paper was thick, creamy, with a bit of texture to it, and the name _Jonathan Sims_ was embossed on the front along with a phone number and an e-mail address. There was no job title.

On the back, in blue ink, was the fanciest penmanship Gerry had seen this side of a nineteenth century diarist. _I'll be in touch. _

“Bastard,” Gerry grumbled, but some impulse made him toss the card in a drawer instead of the trash. He might need the evidence when he told Elias exactly what he thought about the Institute's major donors trying to boss him around.

Michael appeared in the doorway, apparently dithering over whether or not to knock. "Gerard? Is everything okay?"

"Fine," Gerry said, falling into his chair. "Peachy. Tickety-boo. What do you want?" 

"Oh, just, um." He produced an envelope in a cheery yellow color. "This is for you?"

"Is that a question?" Gerry snapped.

Michael withered. "I just heard — I mean, I overheard Gareth from HR talking to Rosie, by accident, I promise I wasn't eavesdropping or anything. But I thought I heard them say that you were done with your treatment?"

Bemused, Gerry took the envelope and opened it. The greeting card inside featured a picture of Snoopy dressed as a doctor. On the inside, in a Comic Sans font: _As they say in obedience school … heal! _Michael had signed it, and Mike and Jane and Rosie, and even, to Gerry's moderate surprise, Elias, though his pen had blotted on the _s._

"Thank you," Gerry said, and if his throat felt tight, he could blame it on the morning's lingering nausea. "That's, er, thoughtful of you."

Michael beamed at him, as sunny as the yellow envelope. "Well, you know, we worry. Or at least I worry. I think the others probably worry. But the worst is behind us now, isn't it?"

"One can only hope," Gerry mumbled.

He bounded off, back to his box of files. After a moment, Gerry tucked Michael's card in the same drawer as Sims'. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "The Man Who Sold the World" by David Bowie


	5. Mamma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true

"I can go," Mike insisted, even as Gerry shrugged his coat on. "It's no trouble."

"I didn't say it was trouble," Gerry told him.. 

"If it is the same person, she's an elderly widow," Mike said pointedly. "How well do elderly widows usually react to your whole … " He made an encompassing gesture in Gerry's general direction.

Gerry grinned at him and gave his knit cap a jaunty tug. "Exactly what elderly widows are we talking about? Some of them have more tattoos than me."

"Your mother doesn't count," Mike shot back. "Also, are you feeling up to it?" 

"I'm going to Stockwell, not the moon." Gerry headed for the door, but Mike clung to his heels like a belligerent corgi. "Keep trying to get Nicola Baxter on the phone. She's got to return a call eventually."

"I got through to her, actually." Mike was starting to sound genuinely irritated now. "I also got through to Hannah Ramirez, and Jane's got me all the records for the other 21 missing patients from Ivy Meadows. So I don't know why you're suddenly putting me off the case."

Ah. That was it. "I'm not putting you off anything," Gerry said, although that wasn't strictly true. "I am taking advantage of an opportunity to get out of this dungeon, because for the first time in months I don't feel like a bus has run me over and my doctor thinks I need the exercise." 

(Also, the last time Gerry had sent him to follow up with a no-longer-missing person, he and Michael had nearly been skinned by the Other Circus. Not that Gerry anticipated that sort of thing happening often, but the Beholding attracted people with more curiosity than common sense, and Mike was no exception.)

Thankfully, Mike took Gerry's excuse at face value, sighing and physically backing away. "All right. That's fair. I'll just … see if Michael needs help with those book lists, I guess."

"His Latin's better than yours," Gerry said, just to see Mike make _that _face on his way out of the archive.

Gerry took the Victoria Line to Stockwell, though he had to walk far enough from the station that he started to regret it. _(No evidence of disease_, after all, didn't mean_ full recovery.)_ He eventually found himself outside a shabby little building that had probably once been a single-family home. Now the upper floors were flats, and the ground floor was an exotic pet shop. Gerry tried the buzzer labeled BLACKWOOD and got no response; the other buzzer might've had a name label once, but it had been scratched out in pen, and leaning on that one didn't help, either. 

Gerry glanced at the shop door. There was a sign that read OPEN, with a cartoon drawing of a fluffy spider on it. The eight oversized eyes were as dewy as any anime girl's, and one foot beckoned prospective customers in; the mouth parts, in contrast, were rendered in exquisite and loving detail. 

Ivy Meadows Care Home had burned down, that bit was undisputed, and Gerry knew a thing or two about balance. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Inside the shop, the air was uncomfortably warm, and most of the light came from the various glass tanks that were crammed into every available space: fish, lizards, snakes, and of course, tarantulas in several colors. Behind the counter was a shelf of books, as well as a couple dusty mugs with slogans like I 💗 MY DRAGON and SNAKE MUM. The man at the counter was large in all dimensions: nearly as tall as Michael, what would've been merely _fat _on a normal-sized person was elevated to a nearly architectural solidity. 

This monument of a person beamed at Gerry when the little bell over the door rang. "Hello! What can I help you with?"

"I was wondering about your upstairs neighbors, actually," Gerry said. "Do you know if Zuzanna Blackwood is in?"

The bright smile slipped a bit. "I'm sorry, but can I ask your name?"

"I work at the Magnus Institute," Gerry said. (He'd learned the hard way about giving his real name to monsters.) "I'd like to ask her a few questions regarding an ongoing investigation of ours."

"Ah." The man's eyes darted briefly towards a side door, and then back to Gerry. "I'm afraid that's going to be a bit of a problem."

"Is it?"

He leaned all his bulk towards Gerry and dropped his voice. "My mother … isn't really up to having visitors. You can try asking her anything you like, but she might not be able to answer, and if she does, there's about a fifty-fifty chance she'll do it in Kashubian Polish."

Well, wasn't that a goddamned delight. Still, if this was a family member — he glanced at the name tag on his apron — perhaps Martin could help. "I see. Would you be willing to answer some questions for me, if you can?"

"Well, that depends on what they're about," Martin said, though the cheeriness was definitely forced at this point.

"Ivy Meadows Care Home? In Woodley?"

Gerry had spent enough time around the Eye and Eye-adjacent monsters to know from piercing looks, and Martin could give any of them a run for their money. Still, he eventually gave a small nod and started to undo his apron. "Sure. Just give me a minute to close up, and we can talk upstairs."

It probably wasn't a wise decision to follow Martin Blackwood up to his mother's flat, even if he wasn't a spider freak. The flat was just as cramped and crowded as the shop, though Martin moved through it with an unexpected ease; if it came down to fight or flight Gerry was at a disadvantage for both. But he wouldn't get any answers without taking a few risks, and he liked to think he was too much of an ornery bastard for the Web to get its hooks into him that easily.

(Granted, a lot of hollow people had probably thought the same thing.)

Martin insisted on making tea: it was very hot and very strong. "So I think I've heard about the Magnus Institute," he said, as he settled into an armchair in the lounge. "Spooky stories, right?"

"Something like that," Gerry said. 

"And somebody told you a spooky story about Ivy Meadows?"

"They did." Gerry sipped the tea, just to be polite, but the room was already so stuffy he was nearly sweating in his coat and hat. He was used to making a few sacrifices for fashion's sake, but this was too much. "Not that we believe every story we're told, but I was hoping your mum could corroborate a few of the details."

"She never liked Ivy Meadows," Martin said, a little distantly. "We didn't have much of a choice, though. I was only seventeen when she was admitted for care, and even with our church's help … well. Anyway, Mum's always been the strong-willed sort. She decided she didn't like the manager and there was no changing her mind."

Gerry set the tea aside and got his notes out. "Hannah Ramirez, you mean? Or...Trevor Herbert?"

"Either of them, really," Martin said with a small shrug. 

Which confirmed that Zuzanna Blackwood hadn't actually been transferred out of Ivy Meadows when it was officially closed. "What was your impression of Mr. Herbert?" Gerry asked as casually as he could.

"He didn't really make an impression," Martin said, which was almost certainly a lie. "The staff didn't seem to like him, but, well, most of them weren't exactly in a position to change jobs on short notice. I only talked to him twice, I think? And the second time I was taking Mum home, so you can imagine how that went."

The NHS didn't have any record of Mrs. Blackwood being withdrawn from care. Point of fact, the NHS still wasn't sure she was even alive. "Must be challenging, being a full-time carer and a small business owner," Gerry put out there.

Martin smiled. "Well, like I said, we get a bit of help from the church. We're not so active anymore, given her condition, but they still look out for us."

And yet he wasn't mentioning it by name. Interesting. "So would you say you noticed a change in the … quality of care, let's say, once Herbert took over Ivy Meadows?"

"Sure, I suppose. But Mum wasn't happy there, and that's the important thing." Martin stood suddenly, and grabbed Gerry's mug form where he'd set it aside. "Let me warm that up for you, I'll just be a minute."

"Thanks," Gerry said, though he was pretty sure if the tea got any warmer, it was going to ignite. "Er, do you mind if I use your loo?"

"Oh, it's no trouble! Just at the end of the hall."

The hall, if you could call it that, had three doors leading off it; two were closed. Gerry slowed as he passed the one that was ajar, but he only glimpsed a shaded window and an unmade bed. The door in the middle, as promised, lead to a bath, which was curiously dusty but showed no sign of the cobwebs Gerry had expected. None of the rooms really had the right levels of cobweb for a Spider follower, but Martin Blackwood either had to be hiding something, or else he was the densest person on the planet. Nobody could see the kind of Corruption manifestation that the Baxter statement had described and not notice _something. _

Unless, of course, he and Herbert had been on the same side…

Gerry eyed the third door. It was firmly shut, but there was no lock or latch, and when he put his ear to the wood he didn't hear any signs of life. It was awfully convenient that Mrs. Blackwood's mental state apparently precluded visitors, and that she was still drawing benefits despite not having seen a doctor — or seemingly anyone but her son — in five years. 

He twisted the doorknob, and then slowly eased it open.

The first thing that struck him was the heat: the rest of the building might be stuffy, but this room was hot, oven-hot, a physical pressure that beat on his face. With the heat came a thick, pungent smell, like old grease. The room was nearly dark except for a rim of daylight around the curtains, but as his eyes adjusted he made out furniture, another narrow bed, and in the bed a — a thing, a mass, with the shape of a person, but black and charred where it wasn't red and weeping. It turned its head towards him, skin cracking and splitting from the movement. It opened its mouth, croaking a few words that might've been Kashubian — 

A heavy hand gripped his shoulder, and he could feel the scalding heat of it through his coat. Martin's voice was surprisingly calm. "Like I said, Mum's not really in a fit state for visitors."

Gerry swallowed. "I can see that, yeah."

"You're not one of Herbert's," Martin continued, without removing that hand. "I was afraid you might be, at first. You've almost got the look."

"That'd be the cancer," Gerry said, fighting to keep his voice level. "I'm in remission."

Martin made an equivocal noise, and finally let Gerry go. "Your tea's in the kitchen. I'll just be a minute." 

Gerry didn't have to be told twice. He escaped the blistering heat of the two Blackwoods, into the postage stamp of a kitchen, and threw open the window so he could breathe properly. He stood in front of it, leaning right up against the old radiator — which was, of course, stone cold. Stupid of him not to check. How many brain cells had he lost, exactly?

The soft sounds of conversation from the bedroom tapered off, while Gerry took his cap off and let the breeze blow through the quarter-inch of hair that had finally grown back in. (His scalp was still too tender to dye it, but at least it _had _grown back, which was something.) Martin came back in and leaned on the door frame. "So. Magnus Institute. The Eye, right?"

"And by 'church' you mean the Cult of the Lightless Flame?" Gerry guessed, turning around.

"Like I said, we're not very active anymore," he said straight-faced. "Christmas-and-Easter cultists, you might say."

"That explains what happened to Trevor Herbert's house of horrors," Gerry said, more to himself than anything. 

"Better that than what she did to my dad," Martin shrugged, and sipped his tea. "Mr. Herbert only died."

"And you know, I fully support that sort of tit for tat." Gerry straightened up and pulled his cap back on. "I'll just leave this bit out of the case notes? Save both of us some future trouble."

"Appreciated." Martin smiled a bit — not the glassy customer-service smile he had been sporting, but something a little wry and a little dark. "Since we're talking about tit for tat and all."

Gerry got the message, and bolted.

The moment he was outdoors, he shrugged off his coat, heedless of the weather. The place where Martin had grabbed his shoulder was burned, not clear through the leather, but enough to leave it stiff and dull in the precise shape of a hand.

Could've been worse, though. That could've been Gerry's head. Or Mike's. Speaking of whom, now he had to find some way to put a mildly Beholding-touched corgi off this particular scent, before the Blackwoods decided it was time to start going to church again....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Pink Floyd's "Mother."


	6. What I tell you three times is true.

Despite all the incense and the scarves and the anti-magnet crystals, Jane had an iron will, and Gerry liked her. He might express that liking mainly through shouting and arguments, but that didn't mean it wasn't sincere. She believed in things with her whole heart, and even if a lot of those things were ridiculous, Gerry sometimes wished he believed in anything even half as much.

"I know you think I'm crazy," Jane was stammering, clutching a cup of tea close to her chest, and the loss of her usual cool made Gerry's heart hurt. At least she was alive, though. And in one piece, though apparently not for lack of effort, judging by the four long, thin cuts that he'd bandaged up for her after she refused an ambulance. "Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I'm finally losing it."

"You're not crazy," he said firmly. "You saw what you saw. I believe you."

She stared at him; a few strands of dark hair had worked loose from her plait and fallen into her wide, wild eyes. "It knew our names," she said softly. "All of us. What does that mean?"

Gerry sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I don't know. And I'm getting bloody tired of that."

She huffed. "God, it must be bad, then. You're admitting you don't know something?"

"Hey," Gerry protested. "I'm not that bad."

"Then _tell us."_ Jane slammed the mug down on Gerry's desk, sloshing tea everywhere. "Quit lurking in here like some pretentious, gothy hermit and tell us what's going on. What _was _that thing? Why did it come to me? What did it mean by 'an emergence,' and what are we supposed to _do _about it?"

"If I knew the answers to half those questions, I would tell you," he protested.

"No," she snapped. "You'd say something cryptic and insulting, disappear for a few days, and then pat us on the head and say we're too stupid to understand if we ever asked a follow up question. Because that's what you always do."

The wall clock ticked over, and Gerry found it curiously difficult to meet Jane's eyes. "Not always," he muttered.

"Close enough," she said flatly, and dabbed half-heartedly at the spilled tea.

Gerry sighed and snatched the tissue from her, not that it was in any way suited to mopping up the tea. "I don't mean condescend to any of you," he said flatly. "Well, maybe Michael, sometimes. I just didn't want to drag you into anything dangerous."

She raised her bandaged arm slightly.

"Point made, yeah." He decided to abandon the tissue before it disintegrated entirely, and slumped back in his chair. "Okay, abridged version: I don't know who or what this 'Sasha' is, or how she knows any of us. I am pretty sure, from what you described, that she's linked to an … entity, let's say, called the Spiral. Deals in illusions, distortions, hallucinations, that sort of thing."

Jane sat up a bit straighter, eyes wide with hope. "So the things she showed me — all that death — ?"

"Could be bollocks," Gerry said with a sigh. "Or it could be genuine, and we'll never know for sure. That's sort of the Spiral's _thing, _the uncertainty of it. Never quite knowing what's real and what isn't."

"It can't be real," Jane said quietly, but there was something brittle in her voice, something not quite sure. Something that said the Spiral had gotten a bite out of brassy, ridiculous Jane Prentiss, and inside, Gerry was furious. 

There was a soft knock at the door — the normal door, he'd been checking since halfway through Jane's statement — and then Michael poked his head through. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't want to interrupt."

"You're fine," Gerry assured him. "What is it?"

Michael toyed a bit with the end of his scarf. "I just wanted to ask Jane — it's past five, you know, and I don't want to impose or anything, but I know we both take the Northern Line, so if you wanted some company on the way home…?"

Jane managed a watery smile. "Thanks, Michael. Just let me get my coat."

Part of Gerry didn't want to let her out of his sight — any of them, really. Tit for tat was one thing, but the Spiral was inherently unpredictable, and if things had somehow escalated to the point that it was actively targeting the Institute's people … well, even if Elias didn't do retaliation, he'd have to start taking protective measures, at least. He'd have to do _something. _

Gerry needed to start taking proactive measures, because security through obscurity was going to get one of them killed. 

"Mind what doors you're going through," he told Michael and Jane, just as they crossed the threshold of his office. "And if you've got any nazars in your vast collection of esoteric statement jewelry…"

Jane frowned. "Nazars? You mean the Evil Eye beads?"

"Exactly that." Not that the Beholding would probably care, but it was better than nothing. He even knew some New Age shops that sold them by the ounce. 

Jane looked like she had a thousand more questions to ask, but then she shook her head a little and patted Michael on the arm. "I'll see you tomorrow, Gerry. Thanks for listening."

He didn't know what else to say besides, "I'm sorry."

For a moment the office was quiet, and he could stew in peace. The Spiral coming after his assistants was bad enough. The Spiral dragging one of his assistants through an illusory hellscape of some kind … and was there a reason it had picked Jane, and not one of the Michaels? Or Gerry himself? Tattoos aside, he didn't think he had enough protection in place to ward off a full-fledged avatar of the Spiral. But perhaps it was after someone easier to trick. Or perhaps there was an extra measure of safety that came from being the stand-in for the Archivist, even if the actual Archivist had fucked off to who-knew-where and not bothered, yet again, to leave a forwarding address...

He heard the door creak open again, and huffed into his hands. "Not in the mood for it, Mike."

"That is a name, yes."

The voice was light and lilting and made his head spin. Gerry bolted upright, to see the actual door of his office was shut. Next to it, in a gap between bookshelves that shouldn't properly exist, was a door made of yellow wood, sporting long, deep scratches in the panels.

The woman standing in front of it was pretty, in a librarian way, with round glasses and a mane of slender braids pulled up in an intricate knot. Too intricate, really, coiling in on itself in a way that made Gerry's eyes hurt. She was tall and thin and if he wasn't paying attention he might not have noticed all the bones in her hands. 

"I am Michael, sometimes," she continued, "except when I'm Helen, except that I'm not. Metafictional awareness is complicated. So is taxonomy." 

"Sasha, I presume?" Gerry guessed, stomach swooping for reasons that had nothing to do with the writhing, shifting braids that crowned her head.

"It's a place to start," she said serenely.

She'd caught him flat-footed, and he realized that was probably the point. Give him just enough warning to be scared. He had nothing to fall back on but hits wits, so he forced himself to smile at her. "If you wanted an appointment, you could've just phoned."

"Where's the fun in that, though?" She perched in the chair Jane had just vacated, and steepled her long, long fingers under her chin. "Ask your questions, not-the-Archivist. I might even answer."

"What's the point in asking questions from the Throat of Delusion?" he shot back. "Lying's sort of the point of you."

She giggled. It was not a nice sound. "You want to ask, though. You're enough of the Eye's child for that. You have questions and they just make you _itch."_

He supposed he didn't have a whole lot of choice except to play along at this point: if she really wanted to, she could kill him where he sat. "All right. Why are you picking on my assistants?"

"I already told your pretty little witch," she said, rolling her eyes far more literally than a person should be able to. "There's a storm coming, and the Eye is the eye."

"Very funny," Gerry said. "Also, point of clarification, Jane is her own witch."

Sasha's eyes narrowed, and she went abruptly, unnaturally still. "Yessss," she said, drawing the word out into a spiral of its own. "You're happy enough to let the Beholding claim others without being claimed yourself. You'll feed it, but won't take what it offers. Like mother, like son. She thought it would save her, too."

His heart thumped oddly in his chest. "What do you know about Mary?" 

She cocked her head to the side. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how did her garden grow? With blood and tears and fourteen fears, is that what you want to know?"

"Skip the poetry," Gerry growled, leaning in. "If this has something to do with her—"

He didn't get any farther than that: in a flash, she had covered one of his hands with one hers, one long finger spearing straight through the meat of his wrist and into the wood of the desk.

"I could peel you like an orange, you know," she said calmly, still in that sing-song way, while Gerry found down the instinct to scream. "It would fair payback for what the Archivist did to me. But there are bigger threats on the horizon, and as much as Sasha James wants justice, the road to extinction is paved with _tit for tat."_

She pulled her hand back, and Gerry immediately clamped a hand around the wound to stanch the bleeding. "I'm sorry for whatever Mary did you," he managed to stammer, after swallowing a few times. "But that doesn't justify stabbing people and giving them hallucinations. Have some honesty about your motives, for fuck's sake."

Sasha clicked her tongue a few times, and reached up to stroke Gerry's face; he braced for another set of lacerations, but none came. "This is why I talked to the witch," she cooed. "You Keays have trust issues."

"You're an avatar of the Twisting Deceit," Gerry shot back. "Trust really isn't on the menu here."

"Gerry, Gerry, so contrary," Sasha said again. "How does your garden die? In bones and ash and mounds of trash, in the blink of a blinded Eye." She darted in, and planted a dry kiss on Gerry's forehead; he recoiled, as much from the kiss as her spiralling laughter. "Be seeing you, not-the-Archivist."

"Fuck, I hope not," he snapped, but she'd already turned her back, and the impossible door shut behind her before allowing the shelves to return to their proper, fully Euclidian configuration.

Gerry spent several minutes cursing — at Sasha, and Mary, and the fucking mysteries of the universe, and himself for getting caugh flat-footed in a riddle contest with the fucking Spiral. Then he considered the amount of blood that was still seeping into his sleeve, and forced himself to readjust his priorities. "Mike?" he called out. "You still here?"

"Yeah, boss?" came a shout from somewhere in the Archives.

"Could you do me a quick favor and dial 999?"

_"What?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "The Hunting of the Snark" by Lewis Carroll.


	7. the Carriage held but just Ourselves

With two lines of stitches fresh in his arm, Gerry gave his assistants a rather stilted explanation of what was afoot, as best he understood it. "I'm not sure the Spiral is capable of giving straightforward information," he told them, "but this Sasha James seems very determined to make us think the world is ending, and I'd like to know why."

Michael raised his hand nervously, because of course he did, no matter how many times Gerry pointed out this wasn't primary school. "A-are you sure that's her name?" he asked tentatively. 

"To the extent I'm sure about anything, yeah."

"Only," he said, then licked his lips nervously. "Only I used to work with a Sasha James, up in Artefact Storage? Until, erm, until she transferred down here to work with — with Mary."

"You're saying that thing used to be a person?" Jane asked, eyes wide. 

"They all used to be," Gerry explained wearily. "Some of them are just better at keeping up appearances."

(Elias had, yet again, rejected Gerry's pleas for better security, for proactive defense. Something, maybe the jumper he'd been wearing, had made his eyes look an eerie, electric blue when he said, "Perhaps they should consider it an educational experience. That is what our patron demands, isn't it?" Which is why Gerry decided it was time to educate them, before anything else got the chance.)

He put them on intelligence gathering, reconstructing what Mary was working on before she went missing, which he should've bloody done from the start instead of just being guilty-glad she wasn't around to hover over him during his treatment. Elias had begun making noises about having her declared dead in absentia, something about blood loss, but she was the Archivist — was still the Archivist, as far as he knew — and Gerry knew those kind of beings didn't die easily.

They could still die, though, which was part of what led Gerry to a tidy row of terraced houses in South London after a couple of weeks of reconnaissance. The address in question had a Subaru parked out front and flowers in the window boxes; he had to look closely to confirm they were plastic. Still. Hardly the intimidating front he'd expected.

He rang the doorbell, but the only response at first was a massive ginger cat poking its face through the net curtains to examine him. It almost immediately withdrew back into the house proper. Gerry tried not to feel judged. 

Just about the time he was starting to wonder about the etiquette of double-ringing, he finally heard the chain pull back, and the door opened. The woman on the other side was tiny, with lots of curly hair and a spray of freckles across her nose. You'd never know she was dead, just from a look at her. "Sorry," she said brightly, with a hint of a Scouse accent. "I was recording, I almost didn't hear you. Come on in, Mr. Keay."

"Sorry for coming by unannounced, Ms. Barker." Gerry wiped his shoes on the rug and hung up his coat in the hall closet. "To the extent that's a thing with you, I mean."

She huffed. "I don't foresee everything, Mr. Keay. That's your lookout. You want some tea?"

"I'm fine, thanks." He retrieved the tape recorder from his coat pocket, switched it on, and then slid it discreetly into the breast pocket of his jacket. If Barker noticed, she didn't say anything.

She directed him to a cozy lounge, where the cat was now sprawled indolently across two-thirds of the sofa. She chivvied him off so Gerry could sit. "So. You're not here to talk about my podcast, are you?"

"Sadly, no, though I am a fan." He sat on the couch and immediately sank deep into the thick upholstery. No wonder the cat liked it. "The Archivist didn't leave any supplementary notes on her interview with you, and it looks like the tape cut off some of her follow-up questions."

(Or, more likely, she'd erased part it after making it — covering her tracks, concealing something even from the Eye? If anyone had the metaphorical balls to try something like that…)

"Oh, dear," Barker said with a little frown. "I don't recall exactly what we talked about, I'm afraid. I mean, death, obviously, but I suppose you were hoping for more details…?"

"Something like that, yeah." Gerry got out his notebook, though he didn't really need to remind himself of the details. "She was following up the statement of Alexandra Brooke, who I understand went to Balliol with you…?"

"Yeah," Barker said dreamily. "I hadn't thought of Alex in years. Had no idea she'd given you lot a statement. She didn't really ask about Alex, though, aside from double-checking some of the names and dates. Mostly she wanted to talk about … well. Have you heard of the Watcher's Crown?"

Gerry generally liked to think of himself as a hard man to surprise, but this job seemed determined to try. "Yeah," he said. "I mean, the name, at least. The details are sort of fuzzy for a reason."

"Hmm." The cat abruptly flung himself into Barker's lap, and she began petting him absently. "They've all got their moonshots, haven't they? The Sunken Sky, the Risen War, the Great Twisting..."

He wasn't entirely sure where she was going with this. "Not all of them, though, right?"

She smiled, an incongruously bright expression. "Oh, all the rites exist. Just some of us aren't stupid enough to actually use them."

"Thank god for that," Gerry muttered, and she laughed a bit. "Is that what Mary wanted to know about? The End's manifestation rite?"

Barker didn't answer the question right away: she just stared at Gerry, long enough that he became uncomfortably aware that when she wasn't talking, she wasn't breathing. When he finally spoke, it wasn't an answer to his question. "Why aren't you the Archivist?" 

He couldn't entirely reign in a huff of laughter. "Not every head archivist is _the _Archivist. I'm just a temp."

"Bit of an intense aesthetic for a temp," she observed. 

Gerry flexed the fingers of his right hand almost unconsciously; each tiny tattoo seemed to wink from the folds of his knuckles. "All teenagers do weird shit," he said bluntly. "I was a particularly weird teenager."

Georgie made an equivocal noise in her throat. "Your mother was the Archivist all your life, and you never chose a side?"

"I chose not to take sides." 

She leaned forward, partially dislodging the cat, who protested loudly. She grabbed a book off a pile next to her chair, though she had to shift a heavy glass ashtray to do so; Gerry noticed absently that the butts in it were all Silk Cuts. Barker opened the book, and declaimed out loud, "'Because I could not stop for Death -'"

"'Death kindly stopped for me,'" Gerry completed. "Believe me, Mary and I had this discussion a hundred times. I'm not particularly interested in bringing about the apocalypse, however, so that's a bit of a non-starter." 

"Well, like I said, not all of us are stupid enough to pull that particular trigger." She closed the book with a snap. "But you're not here to be recruited — though you did have a close call recently, didn't you?"

She tapped the side of her head, just above her right ear. The same spot where Gerry's hair had finally grown out enough to conceal the surgical scar. "I'm not here to talk about me," he said firmly. "The Archivist disappeared three days after she talked to you. I'm just trying to figure out why."

"That's not your actual question, Mr. Keay," she said, a little scoldingly.

Gerry sighed. Of course. He'd been dancing around the question for too long at this point. "How did my mother die?"

Georgie smiled at him, and her face was kind, even if her words weren't. "She didn't."

Gerry's heart skipped. "Do you mean—"

Georgie raised one hand to cut him off. "Be careful about your questions. Once you know the destination, you only get a choice about the route."

"What do you—" He paused. "You mean that your predictions are set in stone."

"Something like that." She shrugged. "Death finds a way."

"All right. Shit." He took a few deep breaths, and chose his words carefully. "Did the Archivist come to you to find out how she would die?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell her?"

"I did."

"But it hasn't happened yet."

She paused a moment, stroking the cat that had re-settled across her legs. "It has."

"You just said—"

"Are you asking me about the Archivist, or are you asking about Mary Keay?" she interrupted.

Gerry rolled his eyes. "Mary's been the Archivist since 1973. Unless she worked out how to quit the job—"

He froze, as he caught up to the implications of his own words. Barker kept petting her cat, and kept not breathing. Of course, Gerry wasn't breathing much, either. 

If Mary had turned away from the Eye after all this time … did that mean she'd switched allegiances? Or had she finally, fully, rejected them all? After forty years of work, after all the people she'd used and all the horrors she'd seen, what would make her turn her back on the family patron now?

What was the Watcher's Crown, anyway? 

"Worked it out, have you?" Barker asked brightly, as Gerry levered himself out of the couch. "Your mum said you were clever."

"She might've even meant it." He checked his pockets to make certain nothing had escaped into the depths of the cushions. "Thank you for your help, Ms. Barker. I'll try not to bother you again."

"Hang on—"

She chivvied the cat aside and crossed the room to stand in front of Gerry; she barely came to his chin, if that. Up close, he could see that her eyes were wrong: pupils slack, lens faintly clouded. Not that it seemed to affect her vision in any way that mattered, but it made sense that she worked in podcasting and not video. 

She put one cold hand on the side of his face, and ran her thumb in a line along the crest of his cheekbone, nearly to his ear. "You're full of close calls, aren't you?" she murmured. 

He caught her wrist, and gently pushed her hand aside. "I didn't ask."

"I know. But you are tied to the Eye, and knowing things you shouldn't is sort of the point of you." She suddenly flashed an impish smile. "Besides, you can't blame a girl for trying."

"Yeah, I could," he said, and she took the hint, and showed him out.

He was calling the Archive almost as soon as he was back on the street. Michael picked up on the third ring, which wasn't ideal, but, well, beggars and choosers. _"Hello?"_

"It's Gerry," he said quickly. "I'm going to give you a list of places and dates, and I want you three to find any cross-references in Mary's files. Have you got a pen?"

_"Just a minute!" _He could hear a faint clatter over the line, and then Michael's voice, too muffled to make out the words. More clattering. A faint voice that might've been Jane. _More_ clattering, and Gerry was about ready to call the whole thing off and send a text.

Then he heard a scream.

"Michael?" No response, just a loud bang like the handset had been dropped. "Michael, talk to me. What's happening?"

No response, at least, no response in words. But very faintly, he thought he could hear music. 

Gerry ended the call, stuffed his phone into his coat, and broke into a run. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is (of course) Emily Dickinson.


	8. the other night I dreamt of knives

The Cambridge Military Hospital had been slated to be torn down for flats, but demolition had stopped partway through — something about the asbestos. The main admin building was still intact, that was grade II listed, but the wards beyond were hollowed-out shells shrouded in plastic tarps and pockmarked with gaping holes where windows had once been.

There was an obvious gap in the chain-link fence that surrounded the site, which immediately made Gerry suspicious. Booby traps and sniper fire fit the Frenzy's purview just as well as knives and clubs, after all. On the other hand, if she didn't want him following her, she wouldn't have left a statement. She wouldn't have left _survivors_. And if he was wrong, well, he would only be wrong for a very brief moment before he became preoccupied with being dead, so there was that.

_(Full of close calls, _Georgie Barker had said, and Gerry wasn't going to read too much into that, he _wasn't.)_

He squeezed through the fence and picked his way across the shattered gravel and dead grass. There were lights inside the gutted structure, but the first few that he checked out proved to be battery-powered security lights, automated to turn on at dusk. At least there were no motion sensors, he told himself, which meant he wasn't about to be arrested for trespassing — but it also would've made it easier to follow her trail. 

Then again, maybe he was thinking about this all wrong. 

Gerry shut his eyes and listened, once there was enough distance between him and the road that the traffic sounds were muffled. The building was still, without even the sounds of little animals scurrying, but after a moment he thought he could pick out a deep drumbeat, the kind of pulsing rhythm you didn't so much hear as feel. He turned a few times, trying to orient towards the sound, trying to fix on the direction, and caught a snatch of voices, and a skirling electric guitar.

When he opened his eyes again, he spotted a couple of dead rats still locked in a grapple, one's teeth sunk into the other's neck. As signs went, it was a bit on the nose. 

He crept through the wards and corridors, where the wallpaper blistered and peeled like a bad sunburn. He'd brought along a torch, for the places where the security lights dimmed or were absent entirely, but he tried to use it sparingly to avoid giving himself away. At least he didn't have to worry about being overheard: the music got louder and louder as he crept towards it, and changed from the bone-shaking boosted bass to a familiar synth riff. Eventually he got close enough to identify the version: _This is what we've waited for ... this is it, boys, this is war! _Subtlety, it seemed, wasn't the Slaughter's strong suit.

By the time Nena gave way to Prince partying like it was 1999, Gerry had reached a set of double doors streaked with dark rust. (He _hoped _it was rust). Flickering light poured from the square windows; when he peered around the edges, he made out a slumped figure in a chair and a fire contained in a metal drum. The figure was the right size and build to be Mike, thought it appeared to have a bag of some kind over its head. In the dim and shifting light he couldn't tell if it was breathing.

It was absolutely a honeypot, and Gerry couldn't think of any alternative put to walk into it. 

He eased open one of the doors, and tried whispering, "Mike! _Mike!" _The music, however, was far too loud to make himself heard without shouting, and the figure on the chair didn't react. The ward was large and open, and when Gerry glanced up he realized the ceiling had gone, revealing the gaping mouth of an upper-floor corridor and the pitted remnants of the roof. No sign of anyone but him and the person in that chair that he hoped like hell was Mike. He supposed there were worse scenarios. 

Prince ended, and there was a beat of pregnant silence when Gerry strained to hear any other signs of life. Then the next song in the queue came up — the Scissor Sisters. Of fucking course. _It's not easy having yourself a good time…_

Taking a few deep breaths, Gerry sprinted from the door to the chair. He snatched the bag with one hand, while reaching behind the chair to work out how the person's hands were tied together. 

He froze when he realized they weren't.

_I'm not a gangster tonight, don't wanna be a bad guy..._

He found himself looking at the mad grin of Melanie King, seconds before she headbutted him. Gerry reeled back, seeing stars. Instinct had him pushing away, but he lost his footing and found himself scuttling frantically along the grimy floor. 

_I'm just a loner baby, and now you've gotten in my way…_

King stood over him, and suddenly she had a knife in her hand — a double-edged stiletto almost as long as her forearm. She said something Gerry couldn't make out over the music _(I can't decide)_ and swiped the blade at him, more a threat than a genuine attempt to stab him _(whether you should live or die) _not that Gerry wasn't already feeling extremely threatened _(oh you'll probably go to heaven). _He managed to get his feet under him _(please don't hang your head and cry) _fast enough to sidestep her initial lunge _(no wonder why), _and backpedaled out of her reach _(my heart feels dead inside) _to get his back against a wall _(cold and hard and petrified)._

From this new angle he could see the layout of the ward, including the bodies mounded against the walls — that explained the fate of the rest of Ghost Hunt UK, and by the looks of it, a couple of security guards as well. Mike was among them, head lolling at a sickening angle, with a Bluetooth speaker resting on his chest. A surge of acid anger flooded Gerry's chest, and he locked eyes with King as she turned to come at him again.

_Lock the door, close the blinds, we're going for a ride…_

This time, when she charged, he stepped aside and grabbed at her from behind. She was small and skinny (no taller than Mike had been, he thought bitterly) but the Frenzy gave her an unnatural strength; she broke his grip easily and twisted around to plunge the knife towards his side. Fortunately, he hadn't yet regained all the weight the cancer had taken; the blade got caught in the loose folds of his coat. He had the advantage for a split second, and he used it to shove King against one peeling, pockmarked wall and press his forearm into her throat.

She dropped the knife to claw at his arm, the nails her right hand ripping into the half-healed wounds Sasha the Distortion had left him. Her lips moved, but now it was Gerry's heartbeat in his own ears that left him unable to hear her, or perhaps his elbow pinching off her windpipe. And somehow she was still smiling at him, showing her bloody teeth, eyes wide and so, so dark. 

_I've got to hand it to you, you've played by all the same rules..._

She suddenly brought her foot down on his instep. Pain shot up Gerry's leg, and he instinctively stepped back off it, creating a space between the two of them. Enough room to bring up her clawed and bloody hands once more.

_It takes the truth to fool me and now you've made me angry..._

Three things happened almost at once, though he would recall each one later on as separate and distinct. Something unseen sliced a hot line across the side of Gerry's face, starting almost at his ear and following the crest of his cheekbone. A perfect red circle appeared on King's forehead, like the opening of a gory eye. A halo of blood and brains bloomed on the wall behind her. 

King fell to the ground, and Gerry backed away, the room around him suddenly snapping back into merciless focus. 

The fire was still going. The stupid fucking music was still going, grating against his ears. He turned in a circle, looking for the shooter, until a sharp whistle got his attention. In the dark aperture of the first-floor corridor, just before the floor/ceiling vanished, Basira Hussein was crouched with a rifle across her knees. 

She offered him a thumbs-up, in lieu of greeting. Gerry replied with a ragged salute, and she disappeared into the darkness again. 

He limped across the room to the speaker, tossed it to the floor, and stomped on it until it stopped playing. The silence was almost as grating as the noise, though. Gerry knelt down next to Mike's body, staring at the massive bloodstain that covered his midsection. Michael had played dead after King slashed him, and Jane had managed to hide until she'd gone, but Mike — stupid fucking corgi that he was — Mike had tried to disarm her with some move he'd learned as a teenager in judo. Or maybe King had just singled him out because the others were so much taller than her, and would've been too hard to carry.

"I'm sorry," Gerry murmured. "I'm sorry it all went to hell." He knew it was sentimental of him — sentimental, and possibly contaminating the forensic evidence — but he reached out to brush a lock of bloodied hair out of Mike's eyes. It seemed like the least he could do.

He reached out over Mike's face, and felt faint breath against his blood-slicked wrist.

"You stubborn little shit," Gerry blurted, and scrambled for his mobile. 

Hussein reappeared on the ground floor just after he'd given directions to the 999 operator. Her rifle was now slung across her shoulder. She made a throat-cutting gesture, and Gerry reluctantly ended the call despite the operator's instructions. "Thought you weren't available tonight," he said irritably.

"Daisy likes you," she said with a one-sided shrug.

Well, good for Daisy. "Likes me enough to offer a discount?"

"Don't push it." She craned her neck to have a look at Mike; Gerry had draped him with his coat in a bid to conserve body heat, or something. It made him feel less useless, anyway. "Friend of yours?"

"Something like that." At least he was trying to be. Mike might have a different opinion, if he lived. 

She nodded, without moving. "You gonna be okay?"

_You caught a case of the frenzy? _was probably what she meant. Gerry thought about the pounding of his heartbeat, the feeling of King's hyoid bone cracking under his arm, and felt a little sick. Then again, looking at Mike's ghastly pallor… 

"I'm ending this," he said, as much to himself as anyone else in the room. "No more Mr. Nice Temp."

Hussein nodded. "You gonna need backup for that?"

His arm was oozing blood again where King had torn at his stitches. His head was still throbbing, and he wasn't sure how well his foot would take his weight. And somebody needed to ride with Mike in the ambulance. Somebody needed to call Jane and Michael, to let them know how it had fallen out.

"I'm gonna need backup, but this isn't really a murder kind of problem," he said finally. "No offense, mind up."

"None taken." She actually gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Be seeing you, Archivist. Glad you're not dead."

"Till next time," Gerry said, and then he had nothing to do but hover over Mike and wait for the sirens. At least, he told himself, it was quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "It's the End of the World as we Know It (and I Feel Fine)" by REM, which is also the first song on Melanie's playlist. The others are "99 Luftballoons" by Nena (English version), "1999" by Prince, and "I Can't Decide" by the Scissor Sisters.


	9. London calling at the top of the dial

Gerry spent what felt like half the night on the phone, giving updates, making deals. The other half he spent confirming his suspicions, to the best of his abilities, to make sure he wasn't about to do something irrevocably stupid. 

He dug into the boxes of Mary's things that he'd hastily packed away in his office, really rooted around for something he only half-suspected he'd find. He found it, though, along with a painting he'd done as a teenager, an amateurish interpretation of the Beholding back when he'd been getting tattoos and hunting for books and doing basically anything to get his mother's attention. Before he'd realized he had a choice between power and basic humanity, and that Mary had already made hers. 

He'd never bothered to ask her if she felt it was worth the trade. 

Elias usually arrived early, and Gerry made sure he was waiting for him at his office door. "Ah. Gerard," Elias said with all due gravity as he turned the corner. "Just the man I was hoping to speak to. You haven't been here all night, have you?"

"Came straight from the hospital," Gerry confirmed. He'd ditched his blazer and ruined coat, and rolled up his shirtsleeves, knowing the bruises and bandages looked worse than they really were. The goose egg on his forehead and the bullet graze on his face didn't help matters, either. He supposed he was lucky King hadn't broken his nose.

Elias made a concerned noise as he unlocked his door. "Any news on your assistants?"

"Mike is in stable condition, but the doctors said it's gonna be touch and go for a while," Gerry recited. "Michael was just being kept for observation, they'll release him in a couple hours. Jane's fine, basically, just a bit shaken up, but she was going to stay with Michael to make sure he doesn't rip his stitches doing something foolish. Great moments in queer solidarity, those two."

"I try to grant my staff some degree of privacy," Elias said primly, settling behind his desk. "What about you? Your encounter with Ms. King seems to have left you somewhat worse for wear."

"I survived it," Gerry said with a shrug. "Mike still might not be so lucky."

Elias nodded. "I suppose you're here to suggest some sort of retaliation? Not that the Slaughter has any sort of organized presence in Great Britain at the moment to retaliate against."

"True." Gerry took a deep breath. "I could just kill you, though."

Elias froze in place for a moment, and then raised his eyes to look deep into Gerry's. They were a corroded rust color today, utterly inhuman, and Gerry couldn't believe he hadn't noticed sooner. "Ah," Elias said. "On what grounds, exactly?"

Gerry raised one hand to tick off points on his fingers. "You wouldn't take action against the taxidermists in Barnet, even though the Stranger is one of the Eye's antitheses. You sent Naomi Herne to me, knowing it'd piss off the Lukases, and let us go after Zuzanna Blackwood, knowing it'd provoke the Lightless Flame. Mary's spent the last ten years poking her nose into every ritual and organized cult of the Powers in the world, making enemies of all of them, and when she disappeared you shrugged your shoulders and said 'too bad, so sad.'" He paused. "Also, I don't recall actually telling you Melanie King's name."

"She left a statement," Elias pointed out mildly.

"Still." Gerry leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, playing at indolence even though it made his wrist hurt. This was almost certainly his last chance to push Elias's buttons, after all. "You've been stirring up shit between the Powers for years at this point, hiding behind your observe-and-record song and dance to keep your own hands clean. And just when you're surrounded by enemies on all sides, your Archivist goes missing, the Eye's very pupil. And what do you do? You use a dying man as a placeholder to keep this miserable pile of bricks from claiming a proper replacement for her. You hamstring your own Institute at its most vulnerable moment."

His face was unreadable, but there was a faint smell accumulating in the air — a little ozone, a little ash. "Why on earth would I do that, Gerard?"

"Because you abandoned the Beholding," Gerry said flatly. "You turned your back on your patron and found a better deal elsewhere."

"That's impossible," he said, but there wasn't any finality to it. It was a shop clerk's _that's impossible _when you were trying to return a purchase, right before she actually put it through. 

Gerry leaned forward now, elbows on knees. "You did it, though. And killed the Archivist to seal the deal. Or maybe she was collateral damage in whatever ritual you needed to pull it off. Or maybe she just tried to stop you."

"And which of the Entities do you imagine I've allied myself with, in this scenario of yours?" Elias asked. 

Gerry decided to answer a question with a question. "Why did Mary have a statement about Garland Hillier hidden behind one of my shitty paintings in her office?"

That got some reaction out of him: Elias raised one eyebrow, and even smiled faintly, like he appreciated the old woman's cleverness. "I'm going to tell you a story," he announced, spreading his hands flat against his desk. "That is part of your job description, after all. Collecting stories."

Gerry had a tape recorder in his shirt pocket; he switched it on, without a word, and set it on the desk between them.

That got Elias outright smiling: his teeth were straight and white like an enameled radiator. "Once upon a time," he said in a slightly sing-song voice, "there was a young man whose only crime was being fairly useless to anyone, including himself. He had the right family background, the right upbringing, the right degree — barely — but he was laboring under the delusion that one's career had to be a life-defining passion rather than a means to keep body and soul together. But he didn't feel particularly passionate about anything, except possibly certain recreational drugs. Thus he drifted, _sans _ambition, _sans _focus, except perhaps the romantic notion that his life's purpose would somehow find him if he just waited around for it long enough. 

"What found him, however, was James Wright, the director of this Institute. Surely you remember him? This was all a good twenty-five years ago now. Wright saw our young man and saw the right breeding, the right social class, the right protective coloration if you will — and a will so utterly feeble that it was no great difficulty to bend it into a curlicue, if he chose to do so. 

"And he did. He lured this useless young man into the Institute and found a use for him. Wright poured into him his own thoughts, his own will, much as Wright's predecessor had once done to him, and so one back to the days when Jonah Magnus first began to fear the End. He did it gradually enough that this young man didn't even realize he was doing it. He didn't even realize his choices weren't his own. And then it was done, and the bag of meat that had been called James Wright expired, as intended. And all that made the Head of the Institute who he was, mind and memories and intentions, remained, now wearing a skin called Elias Bouchard."

Elias paused, which gave Gerry time to process what he'd just said. His expression went a little distant. "I never questioned it. Hardly even recognized that there had been a change until it was done. Like the Ship of Thesus, replaced plank by plank until I no longer recalled where I ended and where the Head began. Perhaps my predecessors had been remade entirely, erased fully, by the time they took over the position.

"I, however, was not. 

"A shred of my selfhood remained intact, however thoroughly welded it was to what I had become. Some part of me was aware I had changed. Not enough to resist; not enough to even conceive of resistance. Merely a discordant note in an otherwise smooth arrangement."

"Until you found an alternative?" Gerry guessed.

Elias's smile widened. "Until I learned there was a monster even monsters fear. A world without us, which means a world without Them. I was disturbed by the possibility, of course, as any Head would be, but I was also … intrigued. Curious, as are all the Eye touches. And the moment I began to speculate on the world the Extinction might bring about was the moment I found my anger, and through it, my freedom."

"Freedom to do what, exactly?"

"Robert Smirke sought to bind the Fourteen. Jonah Magnus sought to rule them." Elias lifted his chin slightly. "I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them _pay_."

Gerry had to take a minute to compose a reaction to that besides _what the fucking fuck. _"That's … ambitious of you," he finally managed to say. "So fostering infighting among the others…?"

"A smokescreen," he said, with a dismissive little flick of his hand. "As was finding Ms. King and arranging her statement when you and your staff became a bit overly curious. But in my own defense, whatever your mother did, she did to herself."

"And you were just the convenient beneficiary, were you?" Gerry asked. 

Elias shrugged. "Frankly, I was just relieved to have the Archivist out of my way. And you were a delightfully convenient … placeholder, was the term you used?" He reached out to stop the recorder. "At least while you lasted."

Right. Because the whole point of a villainous monologue was that the villain didn't expect you to leave when he was done. Gerry nodded, resigned. "Not that I'm a fan of the current balance of terror, you know."

"Oh, I'm aware," Elias said. "But you're also relentlessly humanist, Gerard, and fear is humanity's shadow. I doubt you have the stomach for what needs to be done."

"...No. No, I don't have the stomach for mass extinction events," Gerry said. He locked eyes with Elias. "Can't say the same about pipe bombs, though."

Elias's eyes widened fractionally, and he didn't say anything for a moment, staring into Gerry's like he was staring into the very essence of his being. "You're bluffing," he finally said, but there wasn't a lot of certainty to it. 

And that meant it was Gerry's turn to smile. "There's a gas main runs under the Archives, yeah? Down in those spooky tunnels you didn't know I knew about. Not many people around this early in the morning. Not a lot of collateral damage."

"You're not suicidal," Elias retorted. 

"No," Gerry allowed, "and a pipe bomb isn't enough to kill something like you. But there's a reason you're still play-acting as the Eye's loyal servant, and I'm betting it's not just a smokescreen. I'm betting it's something in those Archives, or something under them. Doesn't much matter what, though. I used a _lot _of petrol."

It shouldn't have worked. It wouldn't have worked, if Elias had still been loyal to the Eye, because he would've been able to Know the truth without moving a muscle. But he'd traded that skill set away, and Gerry had him hook, line and sinker. 

Of course, Elias had some new skills he should've been wary of. 

"That's unfortunate," he said, doing up his suit jacket as he rose from his desk. As he did so, a wave of nausea surged in Gerry's gut, and had the overwhelming feeling that his chair had started to list to one side. "You did do an excellent job piecing the clues together, though, and for that if nothing else, I'll grant you a cleaner death than fire."

"Ta very much," Gerry said, and swallowed hard against the urge to be sick. "Exactly what kind of a death would that be...?"

Elias came around the site of the desk and leaned in close. "You've been breathing point-one-five-percent carbon monoxide since you entered this office," he said quietly. "I just bumped that up to point-nine. Refreshing, isn't it?"

That explained why he felt like he was drowning, even when he was gulping air. "You've got style," Gerry gasped, "I'll grant you that."

Elias patted him on the shoulder. "Goodbye, Gerard. I'd say it's been a pleasure working with you, but … not really."

Distantly, behind him, Gerry heard the office door open and close. He heard the click of the lock. _Damn it. _

He let himself slide to the floor — was CO heavier than air? Did it matter? He rolled onto his hands and knees, and looked up just long enough to make certain he was pointed towards the doorway. He'd dragged himself to work with three different chemo drugs sloshing through his system; he could drag himself ten feet to the damned door, and … and he'd figure out what to do about the lock when he got there.

Nine feet. Eight feet. Seven. 

He had to stop when he was racked by dry heaves, but he hadn't eaten enough in the past day to bring up anything more than acid. Every spasm of his stomach made the pain in his head spike harder.

Six feet to the door. Five feet. Four. 

Three. 

Two.

Gerry pressed his forehead to the plush carpet; his vision was going spotty and gray at the edges. He could almost reach the door. He had to reach the door. If he passed out in this office, he'd die of hypoxia, so he had to get out … he had to ...

Two...

The click of the lock sounded like it was coming from miles off. When it swung open, it let in a faint haze of tobacco smoke. Gerry felt hands on his shoulders, under his arm, and he clung to the associated body without hesitation. With help, he was able to get to his feet, barely; together they staggered forward, though for all he knew he was being lead into the mouth of Hillier's Inheritors. 

After just a few steps he was dumped without ceremony into a different, much less comfortable chair. After a few minutes, the dizziness faded and his vision began to clear, though he still put his head between his knees until he was sure he wouldn't start retching again. 

When he finally was able to straighten up, he found Jonathan Sims standing across the corridor, looking distinctly rumpled. "Thanks," Gerry croaked, wincing at the burn in his throat. 

Sims waved him away with the cigarette in his hand. "Hardly able to fulfill your end of the bargain if you died, are you?"

"Of course." Gerry glanced up and down the corridor, but of course, it was empty. "You took care of Elias, then?"

"Mmm." Sims took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled the smoke from his nose. "He'll need a bit of time to wear himself out, but yes, I've introduced him to my patron. Mrs. Lukas has quite a few questions about this 'Extinction,' and I'm quite sure Mr. Bouchard will have more than ample time to answer them."

"Good. Wonderful. Exactly the sort of treatment he deserves." Gerry rubbed his eyes. "Have you even heard of the smoking ban?"

"Funnily enough, no one's ever complained," Sims said, and responded to Gerry's rolled eyes with a wry smile. "I can offer you a ride home, if you like. Or to a hospital."

"I'm tired of hospitals," Gerry groaned. And like hell he was getting into a vehicle with Sims, anyway. Too bad he'd never bought that napping couch.

Sims shrugged. "As you like." He dropped his cigarette butt into a nearby potted plant. "Mrs. Lukas also has a few candidates in mind for the director of the Institute, now that the position is open. I can send you the files, if you'd like to have any input."

"Fine," Gerry sighed. It was the bargain he'd made, after all. The only way to persuade the Lukases to back his play. "But fair warning, I'm going to sleep for a week first."

"Enjoy that," Sims said. Somehow in the moment between blinks he'd lit another cigarette. "I imagine we'll be seeing quite a lot of each other from now on, Archivist."

The title settled on his aching head like a tumor. At least that was one less thing he'd have to worry about in the long term, he supposed. "I'm already dreading it, Mr. Sims."

There was no reply; when he glanced back at where Sims had been standing, there was nothing left but a few trails of smoke. Gerry supposed he was going to have to get used to that, too. 

He was going to have to get used to a lot of things. Christ, he hoped it was worth it. 

"Mary, when I find you, I'm going to kill you," he said out loud, then dragged himself to his feet. The corridors were very clean and very cold; his dress shoes didn't mark the tile as he made his way to the lifts. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "London Calling" by the Clash.


End file.
